I was "traveling" through the imense internet resources looking for
information about architectural research, when I saw the DOFSBT Homepage...
I was fascinated by the amount and quality of information! It helped my
acknowledgment of the subject, so I would like to start by thanking you
for the publication of your great work!

I am a Portuguese architectural student and I have been trying to find
all the information about architectural research as I would like very much
to contribute for this kind of work!

My degree is of 6 years and the last one (which I will be starting
in January 2001) is supposed to be a first contact with the real world
of architecture outside the university. Many people go to architectural
offices but I would like very much to go to a place where I could give
a contribution to architectural research, as I find this field of work
of the outmost importance to the improvement of human settlements (in a
broader view), and to the formation of the architecture intervinients as
myself...

I would like to ask if there would be any chance for me to work in
your office, and to devellop a work under the orientation of an architect...
I hope that you see my request as someone that is still being born to the
architectural research world but is willing to give it's best; and also
as someone who is fascinated by your great work; knowledge, and conciuosness
of the architectural world!

I have developped, along my degree, severall papers under the orientation
of teachers, such as:
a.. a research about japanese traditional and contemporary architecture
(which I would like to give continuity in the future);
b.. a group research about the city through memory; (I have
displayed some online information about this paper);
c.. a research about architectural utopias through history;
d.. a research about Ethiopia's traditional architecture (as
there will be some reconstruction works of some important monuments and
my teacher was assigned to go there, with other architects, to study their
construction technics -some are of portuguese influence...);
e.. a small group research about the impact of new materials,
such as plastic, in the future (in terms of reconstruction);
f.. etc.
I know that this isn't much and that's why I have said that I am still
being born to the architectural research world... I have developped a homepage
with some information about my objectives, curriculum, portfolio, etc.
and I would be much honored if you would kindly see it.

http://planeta.clix.pt/ana_rita_campos/ana_rita_campos/HomePage.htm

I would like to thank you for the time that you are spending on reading
my e-mail and I hope that I haven't been impolite in any way, as I don't
have many experience in writting to such a distinguished personality!

first please let me thank you for your very kind and enthusiastic letter.
I have looked through most of your own homepage and there are many things
which tell me that you are a very special person.

Architectural research has become a vast field today (30 years ago nobody
spoke about) and its most popular representant is IASTE (International
Association for the Study of Traditional Envrionments) at the Univ. of
California, Berkeley (adress in our Website). They recently had their meeting
in Trani, near Bari, Southern Italy. There are about 3-4000 members worldwide,
mainly architects, but also other professionals of the humanities. They
publish a journal and organise a conference every second year. The papers
are published in a workshop paper series. So, in some way this organisation
is very efficient. On the other hand, and from my personal position, they
have a strong handicap which lies in the fact that architects have a symbolic
education whereas architectural research would require a dominantly scientific
view. Consequently these conferences are fairly stereotype, peoples presenting
their 'travel-lore', that is, endless presentations of slides of some place
somebody visited showing interesting forms of vernacular architecture,
or some specific problems related. But nothing builds up over the years.
Nearly nobody cites anybody who had studied something before. In this sense
the organisation is very inefficient. It always reminds me of those Chinese
temples where you pass along prayer mills: while walking you move them
a little bit with your fingers, and that is it.

In contrast to this I have tried to systematise a domain which is essentially
built on scientific principles (see AHA 1). Not of the history of art,
but based on anthropological outlooks. It was definitely related to architecture
at the beginning but increasingly it grew into other dimensions, mainly
into all fields of culture. It became evident that architecture is much
more ancient than any aspect and type of culture we know and thus it could
have been formative for stuctural traits of culture, not just one, but
all cultures, that is cross culturally! This meant an enormous investment
of studies into other disciplines of the humanities, their main theories
and strategies and how these could be applied to an 'architectural evolution'.

This turned out to be the main problem of the whole. I am convinced
up to 100% that the concept has answers for many problems today. On the
other hand it requires a relatively wide basic knowledge. But, society
is an extremely 'inert' thing. It will not easily change, even if you have
good arguments. Architects want to continute to play their symbolic game,
and society will continue to think that they need architect stars (see
my Barcelona Manifesto).

To give you an explicit example: I have been working with Paul Oliver
for his Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World. After a certain
time of cooperation, I became aware that he had rather an English 'Arts
and Crafts' concept, which was mainly focussed on 'shelter', on domestic
architecture. It excluded anything having to do with religion in the framework
of architecture. But in my concept religion appeared as an expression of
semantic architecture. If I would apply this point strictly, the whole
Encyclopedia devoted to domestic architecture would have to
be considered theoretically misleading (note that 'semantic architecture'
is a global and universal phenomenon).

These are some points for the moment. Anyways, our DOFSBT working environment
looks quite different than an architect's office. We do studies in India,
in the backcountries of the Philippines, eventually in Africa. The results
are put into the internet. Later it will also become published in bookform.
I would be interested to obtain your study of Ethiopia, and, maybe, if
you have some knowledge in Portuguese folklore: are there festivals in
rural Portugal where they build pillars, colums, huts and the like with
plant materials (grasses, twigs, branches) at the occasion of cyclic farming
events? Please have a look at the PDF documentation 'Main Book', it gives
you some ideas what one can relate to 'semantic architecture'.